Transport Minister found dead
Roman Starovoit dies by apparent suicide
This week in the news:
Transport Minister Roman Starovoit was found dead in Moscow on Monday, just hours after he was dismissed from his post by President Putin.
The independent election monitor Golos announced that it is shutting down after one of its founders was sentenced to prison.
President Trump reinstated U.S. weapons deliveries to Ukraine and suggested that the U.S. may sell weapons to NATO for Ukrainian defense.
— Sara Ashbaugh, Editor in Chief
The death of Starovoit
On July 7, Transport Minister Roman Starovoit was found dead in a parking lot in the Moscow suburb of Odintsovo, where he lived. Investigators working on the case claim that Starovoit shot himself. The Minister was dismissed by President Vladimir Putin just hours before the discovery of his body was announced. He was likely on the cusp of facing an investigation into his role in the massive embezzlement of about 4 billion rubles, which affected the erection of defensive structures in the Kursk Region (where he was governor from 2018-2024). The “Kursk affair” started after the Ukrainian army broke into the region relatively easily in August 2024, though the Russian army reconquered the area only nine months later. It has already led to a series of arrests, including those of Vladimir Lukin, the head of the Kursk Regional Development Corporation, and Alexey Smirnov, Starovoit’s former deputy who was also briefly his successor as governor.
Starovoit’s death likely sent shock waves through the Russian political elite: not since 1991 has a high-ranking federal official killed himself. The exact timeline of the Minister’s demise also remains unclear, with law enforcement sources of the business news site RBK initially claiming that his body might have been found on July 5, and the sources of Forbes saying that the Minister died on July 6 or the morning of July 7—in either case before Putin dismissed him from his office. Due likely in part to the shock and the unclear timeline, rumors about the official potentially having been murdered started spreading almost instantly. However, the official determination remains suicide. Starovoit’s wake on Thursday was attended by at least 10 members of the federal government, but notably not by Putin, who either sent a funeral wreath or didn’t depending on whether or not one believes a swiftly retracted news flash by the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin was also absent.
Starovoit was regarded as being close to Arkady Rotenberg, a Putin ally and the main beneficiary of road construction contracts in Russia. In 2022-2023, as Kursk governor, he flaunted his good relationship with Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin. He was also one of the few officials in the Kremlin’s “School of Governors” program to actually get a significant federal promotion after a short stint as governor of a region. However, he was unable to isolate himself from the corruption scandal around the Kursk Region’s defensive fortifications. In February 2025, when Novgorod Governor Andrey Nikitin—another Rotenberg ally and an official reportedly trusted by Putin—was appointed Deputy Minister for Transport, it became increasingly likely that Starovoit would soon lose his job and face prosecution. Nikitin was duly appointed as Starovoit’s successor a day after his predecessor’s death.
Starovoit’s troubles and eventual death also highlight the increasing stress on Russia’s administrative elite. Additionally, rumors about the circumstances of his demise may fuel distrust about whether the Kremlin is still able to effectively mediate intra-elite disputes and fear about the rapidly expanding reach of the security services. Following last year’s government reshuffle, a wave of arrests of high-ranking officials at the Defense Ministry signaled that the prosecution of incumbent or recently dismissed federal officials was once again a possibility. Former Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov was recently sentenced to 13 years in prison. While both Ivanov’s sentencing and the Kursk affair have to do with defense-related corruption, which is understandably prosecuted harshly during a time of war, both in 2024 and in 2025 various regional and municipal government officials were also arrested in waves. The Vyorstka media outlet recently reported that, due to the radically changing cost-benefit calculation, both the governing United Russia party and the “systemic” opposition parties have been finding it increasingly difficult to recruit candidates for office in local and regional elections.
— Andras Toth-Czifra
The funeral for Transport Minister Roman Starovoit was held in St. Petersburg on Friday, a day after his wake in Moscow. According to the news outlet Fontanka, Starovoit was buried in the Smolensky Cemetery near the Chapel of St. Xenia, an area reserved for cultural and governmental figures. The funeral was attended by several federal and regional officials, including Leningrad Governor Alexander Drozdenko and Head of the Altai Republic Andrei Turchak, among others. Prior to his death, it seemed likely that Starovoit would soon face charges for his alleged role in embezzling from the border defenses of the Kursk region, where he previously served as governor. (photo: Peter Kovalev / TASS)
Another nail in the coffin of Russian elections
The independent election monitor network Golos announced on July 8 that it was shutting down after 25 years of activity. Two months ago, one of Golos’s founders, Grigory Melkonyants, was sentenced to five years in prison for cooperating with a European election monitoring network that the government labeled “undesirable.” The authorities had long since been trying to restrict Golos’s activities and independent election monitoring in Russia in general. The organization itself was labeled a “foreign agent” in 2021.
Golos was instrumental for the study of elections in Russia on various levels. The group produced in-depth analyses of (frequent) changes to electoral legislation, investigated the recruitment of candidates on all levels and the administrative barriers they face, trained and organized election observers, and maintained a map to visualize various types of electoral fraud, pressure, or manipulation across the country. Golos’s analyses were essential to understand how public officials, politicians, and business elites have increasingly cooperated for the shared goal of engineering the election results desired by the Kremlin. Thus, the group’s disbanding will make it easier for the authorities to disguise and get away with electoral fraud.
The closure of Golos, one of the largest still-active civil society organizations in Russia today, may also have a chilling effect on civil society as a whole, as it may discourage association with other cross-regional civil organizations and initiatives.
— Andras Toth-Czifra
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers’ conference in Malaysia on Thursday. This was the pair’s first face to face meeting since the U.S.-Russia negotiations in Saudi Arabia in February, which failed to produce significant results. The Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement following the meeting that described it as “a substantive and frank exchange of opinions” on a number of international problems, including Ukraine. Rubio, however, said that he echoed Donald Trump’s “disappointment and frustration” at the lack of progress toward ending the war. (photo: Mandel Ngan / Pool Photo via AP)
U.S. reinstates weapons deliveries to Ukraine
After the U.S. paused its weapons deliveries to Ukraine last week, President Trump now says that Ukraine may receive U.S. air defense systems through NATO.
The U.S. State Department announced a pause in its weapons shipments to Ukraine last Tuesday, claiming that its stockpiles were running low. Affected weapons included precision-guided artillery and Patriot missile interceptors, the latter of which are particularly crucial for Ukrainian defense. Less than a week later, however, President Trump said that the U.S. would resume its weapons deliveries and send “defensive weapons” to Ukraine. “We're going to send some more weapons. We have to…They're getting hit very hard now,” he said during a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister on Monday. Then, in an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Trump claimed that the U.S. would sell weapons, including Patriot interceptors, to NATO to deliver to Ukraine. “We’re sending weapons to NATO, and NATO is paying for those weapons, 100%. So what we’re doing is the weapons that are going out are going to NATO, and then NATO is going to be giving those weapons [to Ukraine], and NATO is paying for those weapons,” he said. The exact details of this arrangement remain to be seen. Meanwhile, President Zelenskyy confirmed that U.S. weapons deliveries have been reinstated during his evening address on Friday. “According to all reports, supplies have been resumed,” he said.
Trump’s decision to resume the weapons deliveries may have been influenced by his increasing frustration with Vladimir Putin. The pair spoke on the phone last Thursday, after which Trump said he was “not happy” and “very disappointed” with the Russian President. “We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” he told reporters during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, “He's very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.” As a result, Trump is reportedly considering supporting a sanctions bill in the U.S. Senate that would impose a 500% tariff on any countries that buy Russian oil or uranium. During his interview with NBC, Trump hinted that he may have “a major statement” to make about Russia on Monday, although he refused to elaborate. The Kremlin has brushed off Trump’s recent remarks, with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov telling reporters, “We are pretty calm about this.” He added that Russia plans to continue its dialogue with the U.S. to “mend our broken bilateral relations.”
The uncertainty surrounding weapons deliveries comes as Russia continues to pummel Ukraine with daily strikes, attempting to overwhelm the country’s air defense systems. On Tuesday night, Russia attacked Ukraine with a record-breaking 728 drones and 13 missiles, and, on Wednesday, Russia launched over 400 drones and missiles at Kyiv alone. “There is no silence in Ukraine. Constant Russian attacks with drones, missiles, and aerial bombs,” Zelenskyy posted on X. “Ukraine needs protection—air defense above all,” he wrote.
— Sara Ashbaugh
From Russia with Risk
On this episode of the Bear Market Brief podcast, geoeconomic and country risk expert Rachel Ziemba joins Aaron Schwartzbaum to delve in the discipline of Political Risk: how does one "do" the field?
Quickfire: Regions
The Federal Security Service (FSB) opened a high treason case against Pavel Andreev, the former director of 7x7 (a major independent news outlet focusing on regional news) and the founder of Revolt Center (a cultural institution in Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic). While Andreev is currently abroad, the FSB has conducted raids in 12 Russian regions, questioning and detaining journalists and activists who are allegedly connected to the institution. The current director of the Revolt Center, Daria Chernysheva, is also accused of failing to display the “foreign agent” marker on her publications. The FSB accuses Andreev of cooperating with foreign intelligence services and endangering the “territorial integrity and constitutional order” of Russia—the kind of accusation often leveled against activists and independent media workers. The purpose of the raids and accusations seems to be intimidation.
Ukrainian drone attacks affecting several Russian regions again caused severe disruptions in Russian civil aviation over the past weekend. According to Rosaviatsia, Russia’s airline regulator, airports in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Nizhny Novgorod, all major transit hubs, recorded the highest number of cancelled, delayed, or disrupted flights. According to the business daily Kommersant, the disruptions—not the first at this scale this year—may cause tens of billions of rubles of losses for Russian airlines. More importantly, they also make war-related service disruptions a common occurrence in several Russian regions. Aviation disruptions are not the only such change. Over the past weeks, dozens of Russian regions have experienced long mobile internet outages following Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb,” which relied on remote-controlled drones. According to the “Online” monitoring project, outages have been the most extensive in Central Russia, but even Siberian and Far Eastern regions have seen increasingly frequent disruptions.
The government approved amendments to a bill that will allow the clear-cutting of currently protected forested areas near Lake Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater lake. The bill was adopted in the first reading in 2023, but its adoption has been frozen since. It was heavily contested by local activists and environmentalists because it allows the transfer of land that is currently protected forest to other land categories, essentially allowing industrial or infrastructural development of these areas. The amendments do not change this provision, but stipulate when exactly clear-cutting is allowed and that decisions on this will be taken by a commission composed of federal and regional political and security officials. Environmental experts and activists have warned that this will endanger the local ecosystem and are appealing to State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin.
— Andras Toth-Czifra